Chalmers Real Estate is number one in energy efficiency - Case study
- Client: Chalmers Real Estate
- Building: Kuggen Building
- Installation year: 2014
- Building Framework: New Concrete building
- Type of Building: University
Overview
Chalmers Real Estate is the property company of Chalmers Technical University. Its main objective is to make the Chalmers campus a world leading science campus, with the smallest possible ecological footprint. The goal is to create a globally attractive, sustainable site for people and meetings. The company has two campus sites, Johanneberg and Linholmen, both situated in Gothenburg on the west coast of Sweden. The buildings in the two campus sites are mainly modern offices, lecture theatres and workshops.
The company has morethan 300,000 square meters of complex buildings, with a wide array of different activities going on inside. The varied use of the buildings for activities such as material testing labs with climate chambers and gymnastic halls for student leisure, makes for a challenging task in the daily routine of the operations team. It also makes installing technical systems a very complex procedure, since indoor climate requirements can differ substantially within and across the portfolio.
Challenge & Actions
Chalmers Real Estate works with the explicit aim of being a pioneer in developing, building and managing a sustainable future. Although Chalmers is a real estate company, they are also a form of testing lab, in which they use their own properties to try out new technologies that could contribute to improving energy efficiency.
This pioneering approach led Chalmers Real Estate to install Ecopilot in their Kuggen building in 2014. Kuggen, which is a new landmark property at the Lindholmen campus in Gothenburg harbour, was energy efficient building prior to the installation of Ecopilot, with a Green Building classification. The building had a modern building management system which controlled the heating, cooling and ventilation equipment. The original BMS did not take the building’s thermal storage capacity into account, which is a considerable asset in a modern concrete structure such as this.
Ecopilot was installed as an energy optimising module, to enhance the existing BMS. Ecopilot gives the existing BMS new set points for heating, cooling and ventilation based on Kuggen’s thermal storage capacity, variable internal load and weather conditions, both present and future.
Lesson and Results
As part of the verification process, Chalmers used the independent consulting firm CIT Energy Management to verify the expected savings from Ecopilot. The measured and verified results by CIT confirmed savings of 50% on heating, 67% on cooling and 26% on electricity for operations. The indoor climate was surveyed before and after the installation and despite the enviable energy reductions Kuggen personnel could feel no negative difference in the indoor climate. CIT’s conclusion from their assessment of Kuggen, was that using the buildings thermal storage capacity trough systems that optimizes, heating, cooling and ventilation is a, “technical solution with verifiable and positive results. The solution, implemented on a larger scale, has the potential to substantially lower energy use in the built environment.”
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